Inventors . only venture in this direction was carried outwith considerable success at a shop he rented inNewark about 1875. But as he told me a fewyears later, in talking about this incident in hiscareer, manufacturing was not in his line. LikeThoreau, who having succeeded in making aperfect lead-pencil, declared he should nevermake another, he hates routine. I was a poormanufacturer, said he, because I could not letwell enough alone. My first impulse upon tak-ing any apparatus into my hand, from an egg-beater to an electric-motor, is to seek a way ofimproving it. Therefore, as soon as I have
Inventors . only venture in this direction was carried outwith considerable success at a shop he rented inNewark about 1875. But as he told me a fewyears later, in talking about this incident in hiscareer, manufacturing was not in his line. LikeThoreau, who having succeeded in making aperfect lead-pencil, declared he should nevermake another, he hates routine. I was a poormanufacturer, said he, because I could not letwell enough alone. My first impulse upon tak-ing any apparatus into my hand, from an egg-beater to an electric-motor, is to seek a way ofimproving it. Therefore, as soon as I have fin-ished a machine I am anxious to take it apartagain in order to make an experiment. That isa costly mania for a manufacturer. It was his success with a device for printingstock quotations upon paper tape that finally in-duced several New York capitalists to acceptEdisons offer to experiment with the incandes-cent electric light, they to pay the expense of theexperiments and share in the inventions if any. Edison in his Laboratory. THOMAS A. EDISON 247 were made. For the sake of quiet Edison movedout to Menlo Park, a little station on the Penn-sylvania road about twenty-five miles beyondNewark, and built a shop twenty-eight feet wide,one hundred feet long, and two stories high. Itwas here that I first made his acquaintance, inJanuary, 1879, so°n after the newspapers hadannounced that he had solved the problemof the electric light. It may be rememberedthat gas stock tumbled in price at that time, andthere was a rush to sell before the new lightshould displace gas altogether. One cold day Iclimbed the hill from the station, and once pastthe reception-room, in which every new-comerwas carefully scrutinized, for inventors are apt tohave odds and ends lying about that they do notwant seen by everyone, I found myself in a longbig work-shop. To anyone accustomed to theorderly appearance of the ideal machine-shop,it presented a curious appearance, for evidentlyhalf the machines in
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